cloud-test: What is Google Cloud Deployment Manager and how to use it

Google Cloud Platform Blog

What is Google Cloud Deployment Manager and how to use it

Monday, November 21, 2016

Posted by Grace Mollison, Solutions Architect

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a Configuration file written in YAML

Template files, based on Jinja 2.7.3 or Python 2.7

Schema files, which define a set of rules that a configuration file must meet if it wants to use a particular template

configuration filesupported resources and associated properties$ gcloud deployment-manager types listinfrastructure as code
Anatomy of a Deployment Manager configuration

net-config.yaml - configuration file

network.jinja - template file

instance.jinja - template file

Understanding templates

Composability, making it easier to manage, maintain and reuse the definitions of the cloud resources declared in the templates. In some cases you may not want to recreate the end-to-end configuration as defined in the configuration file. In that case, you can just reuse one or more templates to help ensure consistency in the way in which you create resources.

Templates written in your choice of Python or Jinja2. Jinja2 is a simpler but less powerful templating language than Python. It uses the same syntax as YAML but also allows the use of conditionals and loops. Python templates are more powerful and allow you to programmatically generate the contents of your templates.

Template variables – an easy way to reuse templates by allowing you to declare the value to be passed to the template in the configuration file. This means that you can change a specific value for each configuration without having to update the template. For example, you may wish to deploy your test instances in a different zone to your production instances. In that case, simply declare within the template a variable that inherits the zone value from the master configuration file.

Environment variables, which also help you reuse templates across different projects and deployments. Examples of an environment variable include things like the Project ID or deployment name, rather than resources you want to deploy.